Closets Full of Dreams

Roger Anis

Delhi Photo Festival 2015 brings Cairo based photojournalist, Roger Anis’ work to India for the first time. The Tasveer Journal takes a look at Anis’ exploration of Egyptian women’s closets, repressed desires, and their wider contexts and meanings, unpeeled through his work.

“A woman’s dress is a permanent revelation of her most secret thoughts, a language, and a symbol.”

– Balzac, Une filled’Eve

As one of the most visible forms of consumption, clothing fulfils a primary role in the social construction of identity. Clothing choices showcase how people interpret both their socio-cultural surroundings, as well as their selves through visible markers. In doing so, it forms a useful tool in both maintaining and subverting symbolic boundaries. Historically, clothing has been the principal means of identifying oneself in public space, and enabled an expression of not only one’s regional or religious identities, but also negotiated status boundaries through its expression of social class and gender.

Artefacts however, can also be understood as exercising a cultural ‘agency’, beyond being indicative of social behaviour and attitudes. Within this framework, clothing can be viewed as possessing a vast reservoir of meanings that can be manipulated or reconstructed, so as to enhance a person’s sense and image of self, and even agency. Interviews by social psychologists, such as Kaiser, Freedman & Chandler (1993) for instance, show that people attribute to their ‘favourite’ clothes, the capacity to influence the ways in which they express themselves and interact with others. The construction and presentation of self as determined by clothing choices therefore, is a malleable enterprise, and produce valuable sites for the examination of relationships between existing marginal and hegemonic discourses.

In any period, fashion discourses include a set of those that support conformity to dominant conceptions of social roles, and those that express social tensions pushing currently accepted perceptions of social roles in new directions; including those of marginal groups seeking acceptance for clothing behaviour that is seen as deviant or marginal according to existing notions of status or gender roles. Historically, gender, far more than class, has been forced to assume a salient role in clothing choices; wherein the patriarchal system not only dictates, but also regulates women’s clothing choices, in both direct and indirect ways.

Denied other modes of participation in the public sphere in earlier centuries, women were often identified with clothing — the only visible mode of their presence in the public sphere — and associated with monikers such as ‘petticoats’ or ‘lightskirts’. Further, female clothing choices have often been seen and policed within society, as reflective of the bipolar paradigm constructed by patriarchy within which women serve as representative of either the Madonna (virgin) or the whore. Within such a paradigm, women are essentially reduced to their sexuality, above all else, and clothing choices are perceived are representative of their sexuality, whether intended, or not. In a consumerist world that has successfully brought about a widespread commodification of sex, and played into this paradigm, the sexual objectification of women (particularly as represented by fashion trends) has reached an apex in our contemporary times. These cultural practices and social attitudes, that have furthered an unfortunate climate of victim blaming in instances of sexual harassment, producing the false understanding that women’s clothing choices could be responsible for sexual abuse of any kind. Although empirical studies have proven the lack of any evidence to support a causal relationship between women’s clothing choices and instances of sexual harassment; and statistics show that men may perceive any kind of self presentation as desirable, including conventionally acceptable or appropriate clothing, societal impulses nevertheless focus on limiting women’s movements and choices by holding them responsible for harassment faced, as opposed to male perpetrators.

In such a milieu, where gender inequity — the primary cause of sexual harassment — remains unaddressed and women’s behaviour and clothing choices are constantly called into question, women often feel the need to protect themselves by conforming to these expectations and thereby restricting themselves from exposure, self expression and an engagement with their desires.

Cairo-based photographer, Roger Anis, decided to confront this issue by making diptychs of portraits of women, alongside the clothes they would like to wear, but find themselves unable to. Reaching beyond sexism, this photographic series, titled Closets Full of Dreams, addresses intersectional themes of ageism, body image, religious traditions and even political expression. In an article featured in TIME’s Lightbox, Anis notes that, “it’s not just about clothing. It’s the idea that there is no freedom for women in general.”

Karoline Kamel, 29. “I changed the way I wear clothes just to walk on the streets. I started to wear loose-fitting clothes so that I could feel comfortable and secure, and I convinced myself that I love this style even if I’m not a big fan of it. Recently, I started to ride a bicycle in Cairo. It’s horrible and hard to move with a bike here, whether because of the traffic, the harassment, or the looks. Despite all these hardships, I still insist on riding my bike. To do this, of course, I have to wear loosefitting clothes, but I still dream of wearing whatever I want, like shorts and a nice shirt.”

Hala Nammr, 54. “Once, I bought a very nice dress that I really liked. After I bought it and tried it at home again, I immediately took it off and gave it to my daughter because I realized that I would not be able to wear it in Cairo. The dress was backless and I knew I wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing it, unless I was in a country other than Egypt. In a different place, I would wear it without hesitation.”

Maha Monieb, 27. “I always hear a lot of silly comments about my body in the street because I’m fat. I started to go on a diet and do some sports, not just because the society refuses my body but also for myself. One of my dreams is to be able to walk around the streets wearing nice dresses, but I can’t do this when I weigh this much. I used to cover my hair, but I’m getting rid of my headscarf. Gradually, of course, because I can’t just do it. I have to convince my parents and family first. When I look in the closet of one of my dear friends, I find the dresses I dream to wear when I’m in better shape. I am really looking forward for this moment to come.”

Fashion is often construed as the reduction of self-identity to image, or spectacle, and a frivolous pursuit, ironically, associated with the female sex. A Harvard Women’s Law Journal article that explores the legal justifications of gender-specific clothing regulations as a study in patriarchy, begins with the following quote by H. L. A. Hart, made in The Concept of Law in 1979:

“In contrast with the morals, the rules of…dress…occupy a relatively low place in the scale of serious importance. They may be tiresome to follow, but they do not demand great sacrifice: no great pressure is exerted to obtain conformity and no great alterations in other areas of social life would follow if they were not observed or [were] changed.”

This is followed by a second quote by Andrea Dworkin (1981) that pithily sums up the papers argument against this ideology, as translated in reality:

“Objectification, in fact and in consequence, is never trivial.”

It is of supreme significance therefore, that this photographic series publicises the everyday experience of multitudes of women who have to play active roles in deciding what clothes to wear, that is paradoxically informed by their passive roles in a societal construct that does not allow them to make these choices unfettered by its enforced external (and male controlled) codes that dictate their clothing choices.

Constructing personal narratives, Anis’ photographs are a revelation not only of the sexual harrasment faced by Egyptian women, but also of the larger endemic problem of conventional social assessment that conflates fashion and sexuality. Underlining the suffragette cry of the personal as political, it showcases the linkages between a hostile environment ripe with sexual harassment, gender, societal expectation, self perception, body image and sexuality — and explores how they play out in contemporary Egyptian society.

As the all pervasive structures of patriarchy, both place the burden of defending themselves and their rights on women, while accusing them of being extreme or aggressive when they do so, a male perspective of support is seen as more objective, or rationally driven. Within such a context especially, as Jen Tse notes in her TIME-Lightbox article, “Anis’ work is not only a man’s recognition of the threats women endure, the higher standards to which they are held, and the simple freedoms they are denied, but also a starting point for men in Egypt—and beyond—to see women through a lens of empathy and respect.”

Aleya Adel, 20. “I love colors and wearing a niqab doesn’t mean you only wear black or dark colors. I wear anything as long as it’s loose-fitting and I’m covering my face. Once I wore this dress with butterflies on it, and a man on his bicycle stopped to ask, ‘Is it really Islamic to wear colors under your niqab?’ Then he spat at me and went away. For me, clothes have nothing to do with harassment. You will be harassed no matter what you are wearing.”

Hana Elrakhawy, 22. “I shaved my head some time ago and it was very hard to walk in the street due to all the harassment, but I didn’t care. The most common thing I used to hear was, “Hey, boyish girl!” I don’t care anymore. Since I was young, I always loved to wear the folkloric Egyptian clothes and walk around in the streets, and I didn’t really care about what people thought. The only thing that I always loved to wear—but I can’t really do it freely nowadays—are the t-shirts with the revolutionary signs on them, because now you can get arrested immediately if you wear any of these on the street.”

Amria Mortada, 33. “I’m a tomboy. I feel it suits me better. I don’t have any dresses, but every now and then I dream of wearing one and I end up being afraid because I fear the streets. So, I decided not to buy any. I bought a pair of pants, which seemed very normal to me, but I was surprised when I got harassed verbally while wearing them. I never understood why this happened, but I was annoyed and even shocked to know that it happened because of the color of my pants. In the street, a girl becomes like merchandise. People are allowed to look at her as if she is displayed in a shop. Honestly, I’m still traumatized from what happened to me while wearing these pants and I’ve decided to never wear them again. I don’t have the energy to stand against those who harass me.”

Azza Fadaly, 43. “I was sexually assaulted by a group of men in Tahrir Square on the day when former president Mohammed Morsi took office in 2012. The square was full of people celebrating and I was going there to do my job as a photojournalist reporting from the scene. I was with a male friend, but it didn’t prevent them from harassing me. I was rescued before being raped, but I still remember every hand touching my body. It wasn’t the first time I got harassed. I remember being harassed by a family member when I was just 5 years old. All these memories inside my head are affecting the way I’m choosing what to wear and the way I’m behaving while walking down the streets. This is why I become very aggressive in the street if anyone gets close to me. Also, I do not feel comfortable in my clothes even when I’m going to wedding parties or celebrations. I became more embarrassed of my body; I lost my relationship with my body. What happened to me in Tahrir Square made me collect all the dresses and clothes I had and store them in two bags. Now, I try to just wear normal clothes that help me avoid the looks of people in the street.”